Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

That's part of the problem, is that they're gimmicks. Gimmicks are bad game design and tend to irk people, and when they do work tend to do so in a way that's not particularly fun and is greatly imbalanced. Imotekh being a prime example.

Pacific wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:
It was a matter of escalation.

In the Marine Codex, Calgar takes on an Avatar and wins, but damn near gets himself killed in the process, stopping the Wailing Doom only because of his unobtanium gauntlets. In the Blood Angel Codex, the Mary Sueguinor beats up an Avatar with one angelic hand tied behind his angelic back. In the Grey Knight Codex, Draigo fights the universe and wins.

The first was sorta passable, the second was simply stupid... and the third... by the Throne...

Actually, I was thinking how it could possibly escalate from there with the next Chaos Codex? What could a new Chaos character do that could trump Draigo's exploits?

Then I thought of time travel... and the missing Primarchs..

Abbadon is gonna carve his name into the reborn Star Childs heart - and it hasn't even been reborn yet. So there.

But he still can't take Cadia.

EDIT: Oh wait, you said new character? Ok, so Abbaron is gonna ... well, you know.

Omegus wrote:
5. He occasionally signs his name as "Mat" with one "t". For some reason that affectation irritates me to no end.

Give the man a break, we all know that writing is not his strong suit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Experiment 626 wrote:
BA's however are everything codex marines are but +1.

This is my main beef with the BA book. They get basically everything that SM get, and then much more. He basically copy pasted C:SM and then added bunch of stuff, some of it crazy. They are not just a better assault army than vanilla marines, they're a better shooty army too.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

LunaHound wrote:
Neither does Monica Lewinsky smoking Clinton cigar have anything to do with Clinton's work right?

Well it really didn't...

A writer giving interviews in the company magazine about a book he wrote for said company however does.

Vaktathi wrote:That's part of the problem, is that they're gimmicks. Gimmicks are bad game design and tend to irk people, and when they do work tend to do so in a way that's not particularly fun and is greatly imbalanced. Imotekh being a prime example.MY PERSONAL OPINION OF COURSE

I suppose the fact that the Necron codex has multiple viable and different builds to play must be 'irksome' and 'not fun' to people who play with monobuild only codexes.

Also god forbid that people want to play with 'gimmicky' lists like Deathwing, biker lists, or horde lists.

Crimson wrote:

Omegus wrote:
5. He occasionally signs his name as "Mat" with one "t". For some reason that affectation irritates me to no end.

Give the man a break, we all know that writing is not his strong suit.

Or quite evidently, comprehension is not the strongest suit of most of his haters. Show me where he refers to himself as MATT Ward, its either MATTHEW Ward or MAT Ward, which is an acceptable abbreviation and more importantly what HE chose, and not what anyone else thinks it should be.

I want to say one positive thing about Ward. He is innovative. He is not afraid of trying new things and with childlike enthusiasm invents all sorts of crazy stuff, some of it good. But he just needs an adult to supervise him, as he absolutely has no restraint nor ability to tell when he has gone too far. Someone to swat him with a rolled newspaper and say: "No Matt, dreadnoughts will not get jump packs!"

Crimson wrote: "No Matt, dreadnoughts will not get jump packs!"

Why not?

Also that's awesome.

FallenAfh wrote:

Crimson wrote: "No Matt, dreadnoughts will not get jump packs!"

Why not?

Also that's awesome.

Actually, to be fair. Why don't they have jump packs? You'd think there'd be some lost technology that would allow dreadnoughts to get into combat far faster than just drop-podding them in.

Crimson wrote:A writer giving interviews in the company magazine about a book he wrote for said company however does.

No, it doesn't. Like Blaxican said, you could make a case for his enthusiasm for Ultramarines bleeding into the codex, but there is no case to be made that all codex chapters view the Ultramarines as their spiritual liege. It's simply not anywhere in the background, and trying to assert that it is, because someone said it in an interview, is stupid.

Kaldor wrote:

Crimson wrote:A writer giving interviews in the company magazine about a book he wrote for said company however does.

No, it doesn't. Like Blaxican said, you could make a case for his enthusiasm for Ultramarines bleeding into the codex, but there is no case to be made that all codex chapters view the Ultramarines as their spiritual liege. It's simply not anywhere in the background, and trying to assert that it is, because someone said it in an interview, is stupid.

Not to mention that's not what he said in the first place. Most Chapters DO view Calgar as their spiritual liege, because 60-ish percent of the Chapters are of UM origin. It's the same kind of deal as the Unforgiven all Boeing to Azrael or the Blood Angels successors coming to help them protect Baal:

Kaldor wrote:

Crimson wrote:A writer giving interviews in the company magazine about a book he wrote for said company however does.

No, it doesn't. Like Blaxican said, you could make a case for his enthusiasm for Ultramarines bleeding into the codex, but there is no case to be made that all codex chapters view the Ultramarines as their spiritual liege. It's simply not anywhere in the background, and trying to assert that it is, because someone said it in an interview, is stupid.

From earlier in the thread...



So there we go, Matt Ward's opinion. The majority of the 40k fan community probably wouldn't agree with him on that point, but there it is: 'with a few fringe exceptions'.

Pacific wrote:So there we go, Matt Ward's opinion. The majority of the 40k fan community probably wouldn't agree with him on that point, but there it is: 'with a few fringe exceptions'.

That's great, but can you point me to an actual background source that states that?

His opinion, as stated in an interview, doesn't mean squat.

Kaldor wrote:

Pacific wrote:So there we go, Matt Ward's opinion. The majority of the 40k fan community probably wouldn't agree with him on that point, but there it is: 'with a few fringe exceptions'.

That's great, but can you point me to an actual background source that states that?

His opinion, as stated in an interview, doesn't mean squat.

Background source that states other chapters look up to the UM's as their spirtual liege? while that may be taking it a bit far I dont see a issue in saying other chapters would look up to the UM's, they are mostly all codex chapters which comes from the UM's, they have a very good record and report with the high lords and administration they even have their own star system with forge worlds and multiple recruiting worlds and support, they are pretty powerful in comprassion to other codex chapters it is not hard to imagine other chapters admiring them. But saying they are the spirtual lieges is maybe taking it a bit too far.

Cant say I view this as a major issue though and those that do seems, imo, quite a small gripe in comprassion to some other fluff inventions/changes

Crimson wrote:I want to say one positive thing about Ward. He is innovative. He is not afraid of trying new things and with childlike enthusiasm invents all sorts of crazy stuff, some of it good. But he just needs an adult to supervise him, as he absolutely has no restraint nor ability to tell when he has gone too far. Someone to swat him with a rolled newspaper and say: "No Matt, dreadnoughts will not get jump packs!"

Every artist should have a large, burly man standing behind him with a large hammer... To hit him with it when the job is done. Prevents additional additions to an already repetitively redundant addition.

Bloody blood for the bloody blood god deity!!!

MarkyMark wrote:Background source that states other chapters look up to the UM's as their spirtual liege? while that may be taking it a bit far I dont see a issue in saying other chapters would look up to the UM's, they are mostly all codex chapters which comes from the UM's, they have a very good record and report with the high lords and administration they even have their own star system with forge worlds and multiple recruiting worlds and support, they are pretty powerful in comprassion to other codex chapters it is not hard to imagine other chapters admiring them. But saying they are the spirtual lieges is maybe taking it a bit too far.

Cant say I view this as a major issue though and those that do seems, imo, quite a small gripe in comprassion to some other fluff inventions/changes

Indeed. Even in his interview, he clearly states that the chapters who think otherwise are either Imperial Fists, their successors, or chapters who backed them up when Dorn and Guilliman were competing who had the biggest pauldrons.

No matter how he said it ("Those non-Ultramarine chapters suuuck!") I believe he still simply meant that the Ultramarine successor chapters, which by the way make up over 60% of all Astartes, view Guilliman as their spiritual leader and revere the Ultramarines as the greatest Space Marines there is. It is also completely logical considering every other chapters which originated from either IF, BA, DA or WS also think their Primarch and Chapter is the best one out there and have nothing to do with Guilliman or the Ultramarines.

If you have ten children in a room, six of whom have the same father and four of whom have four separate ones, and ask them who they think is the best father out there... Well, you get the idea.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

FallenAfh wrote:

Crimson wrote: "No Matt, dreadnoughts will not get jump packs!"

Why not?

Also that's awesome.

Actually, to be fair. Why don't they have jump packs? You'd think there'd be some lost technology that would allow dreadnoughts to get into combat far faster than just drop-podding them in.

They are called GK Dreadknights and BA Librarian Dreadnoughts...

And the author is....

DAaddict wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

FallenAfh wrote:

Crimson wrote: "No Matt, dreadnoughts will not get jump packs!"

Why not?

Also that's awesome.

Actually, to be fair. Why don't they have jump packs? You'd think there'd be some lost technology that would allow dreadnoughts to get into combat far faster than just drop-podding them in.

They are called GK Dreadknights and BA Librarian Dreadnoughts...

And the author is....

As much as people hate him, he does have some of the most innovative dex's when considering it.

Some people see it as innovative, other people see a lot of it though as fan-fic gone wild

There's nothing wrong with new stuff, the problem is when it's hamfisted in with ill fitting fluff, half the time breaks previously long-standing fluff convention, and has painfully juvenile naming slapped all over it.

Skipphag da Devoura wrote:

Crimson wrote:I
Bloody blood for the bloody blood god deity!!!

Can you imagine if he wrote the next tau codex?

Friendly grenades
Greater good guns
Friendly firebomb


Oh the possibilitys are endless

I always thought that a codex was a group project? More and more it appears to be a one man show. They should be a group project so that the group could tell Ward "Hey 75% of this great but this other 25% needs to be toned down" the same thing would help Cruddace "Hey man 25% of this is decent and 75% of it really sucks"

I like mr. Cruddace Tyranids. Played with terrain applied by the book, 25% with large LoS - blocking pieces included, the army was great to play and 160 points for Carnifex is not his idea for sure but entire GW standard shady action to make people buy new beasts. If mr Cruddace was chosen to write 6th edition codex, I'd be ok with that.

Now, the thought that Mat Ward could be the one writing 6th edition Tyranids makes me cringe, the guy is bad news. I guess he thinks he's funny or has great ideas when writing but the outcome is kind of a mess, ridiculous and over the top but certainly in a bad way for me. Also his unashamed stance on unbalancing the game should end with him immediatly out as a writer of rules, at least in a proper game designing company.

Experiment 626 wrote:

Omegus wrote:2. His mentality towards writing rules does not at all consider balance, but rather how he feels about the army (I don't like Orcs and Gobbos, so their book sucks. Daemons are DAEMONS!!1!!, so they should be unbeatable. For people saying Space Marines is balanced, when it first came out it was certainly the top-tier cheese with Vulkan in every army list).

Well, to be fair every book is cheese for the first few weeks - it's just the basic laws of wargaming! (heck, even 7th ed Orcs&Gobbos were "cheese" for the first 5 days! )

C:SM's overall is pretty balanced with the exception of a couple standout combos. (Vulkan = king of 5th due to his meltagun buffs, Lysander + Sternguard = horrible things, etc...)
BA's however are everything codex marines are but +1.
GK's are basically the best of every marine codex +10!
Newcrons are just disgusting right now.
Wood Elves in 6th were hienous, awful things with forest-surfing Treemen & Waywatchers doing nasty things to everyone.
Daemons broke 7th edition entirely. (even DE's & Sakven couldn't compete! )
7th ed O&G's just sucked the big one...
WotR is unplayable if one player wants to roflstomp

So out of 8 total 'army' projects, 1 is well balanced, 1 sucked to the point of being nearly un-winnable, and the rest are all either OTT or outright broken as feth!

lolwut?

I can basically agree with everything here, but... WE? Broken? Not even in 6th, man. Not even when that book came out. Not by a long sight. And they certainly didn't weather the transition to 7th well, to say NOTHING of 8th. One can make an incredible argument that WE took 8th ed the hardest of all books, if one didn't count the distance the army in question fell in power. WE went from being 3rd tier to being the bottom of it. VC went from being in the top 3 armies of 7th to one of the bottom 3 of 8th until the new book came out. Demons took nearly every change of 8th ed and laughed it off, as none of the things that affected VC touched them. Even DE took a hit from the step up rules, variable charges, and loss of charge blocking. Necrons went from somewhat balanced in 5th to wtf in 6th, Grey Knights appear largely untouched. Ward books (the REAL ones) don't "suffer" from new editions.

This is the first I've heard that MW wrote the Wood Elves, but I assure you it was never a broken book, even on release. It was a manuver army in a manuver game that had a tourney system that rewarded crushing victories to the near exclusion of all other results. A good WE player might win every game in a tourney in 6th, but still not place in the top 3 (or even 10) because they could never muster the murder levels demanded to do so.

I don't think he did write the WE book, he wasn't didn't join GW until 2006 or 2007 IIRC. The first stuff I think he was credited in was either late 2007 or early 2008.

[spoiler]http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Matt_Ward[spoiler]

I dont want to sound like 40k cancer by complaining about him but you cant deny the guy is a terrible fluff writer.

People who cite 4chan as a source have no place to be throwing vitriol Ward's way.

Mostly because 4chan is full of so bloody much incorrect information that it makes the Fiction section look like a documentary club.

Vaktathi wrote:I don't think he did write the WE book, he wasn't didn't join GW until 2006 or 2007 IIRC. The first stuff I think he was credited in was either late 2007 or early 2008.

He actually did. I just checked it. "Written by: Anthony Reynolds and Matthew Ward."

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

DAaddict wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

FallenAfh wrote:

Crimson wrote: "No Matt, dreadnoughts will not get jump packs!"

Why not?

Also that's awesome.

Actually, to be fair. Why don't they have jump packs? You'd think there'd be some lost technology that would allow dreadnoughts to get into combat far faster than just drop-podding them in.

They are called GK Dreadknights and BA Librarian Dreadnoughts...

And the author is....

As much as people hate him, he does have some of the most innovative dex's when considering it.

As well some of the worst fluff.
So I leave this thread with a /tg/ song we made for you codex complainers!!!

Bud Light Presents: Real Men of Genius

>Real Men of Genius!

Today we salute you, Mr. Grey Knights Codex Thread Spammer.

>Mr. Grey Knights Codex Thread Spammer!

Most trolls feign stupidity just long enough to piss somebody off. You have the tenacity to act like an idiot for weeks at a time.

>Why's it look like a baby?

Three times an hour, twelve hours a day, you create a thread asking the questions that were answered fifteen minutes after the Codex was leaked.

>I heard they can take daemonhosts!

Mod warning sticky? Those are for !@#$%6&.

>And WHYYY aren't there any girl Knights?!

You've spent hours and days devoting yourself to ensure that people will never stop talking about a Codex you have no intention of ever even playing.

>LOL Jokaero!

So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, oh corpulent codex complainer, because without you we'd never forget that Kaldor Draigo is kinda like Samurai Jack.

>Mr. Grey Knights Codex Thread Spammer!

Kanluwen wrote:People who cite 4chan as a source have no place to be throwing vitriol Ward's way.

Mostly because 4chan is full of so bloody much incorrect information that it makes the Fiction section look like a documentary club.

Really?

Let's hear it then: exactly which statements about Ward in the cited link comprise "incorrect information".

Btw: I don't need to refer to 4chan to "throw vitriol Ward's way." I just have to crack open anything he's ever dumped on 40K and/or WHFB. For reasons done to death in this thread and elsewhere.

Plumbumbarum wrote:I like mr. Cruddace Tyranids...

You must be the only Tyranid player I've ever heard of who doesn't wish Cruddace was eternally banned from touching our Tyranids again.

Nagashek wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

Omegus wrote:2. His mentality towards writing rules does not at all consider balance, but rather how he feels about the army (I don't like Orcs and Gobbos, so their book sucks. Daemons are DAEMONS!!1!!, so they should be unbeatable. For people saying Space Marines is balanced, when it first came out it was certainly the top-tier cheese with Vulkan in every army list).

Well, to be fair every book is cheese for the first few weeks - it's just the basic laws of wargaming! (heck, even 7th ed Orcs&Gobbos were "cheese" for the first 5 days! )

C:SM's overall is pretty balanced with the exception of a couple standout combos. (Vulkan = king of 5th due to his meltagun buffs, Lysander + Sternguard = horrible things, etc...)
BA's however are everything codex marines are but +1.
GK's are basically the best of every marine codex +10!
Newcrons are just disgusting right now.
Wood Elves in 6th were hienous, awful things with forest-surfing Treemen & Waywatchers doing nasty things to everyone.
Daemons broke 7th edition entirely. (even DE's & Sakven couldn't compete! )
7th ed O&G's just sucked the big one...
WotR is unplayable if one player wants to roflstomp

So out of 8 total 'army' projects, 1 is well balanced, 1 sucked to the point of being nearly un-winnable, and the rest are all either OTT or outright broken as feth!

lolwut?

I can basically agree with everything here, but... WE? Broken? Not even in 6th, man. Not even when that book came out. Not by a long sight. And they certainly didn't weather the transition to 7th well, to say NOTHING of 8th. One can make an incredible argument that WE took 8th ed the hardest of all books, if one didn't count the distance the army in question fell in power. WE went from being 3rd tier to being the bottom of it. VC went from being in the top 3 armies of 7th to one of the bottom 3 of 8th until the new book came out. Demons took nearly every change of 8th ed and laughed it off, as none of the things that affected VC touched them. Even DE took a hit from the step up rules, variable charges, and loss of charge blocking. Necrons went from somewhat balanced in 5th to wtf in 6th, Grey Knights appear largely untouched. Ward books (the REAL ones) don't "suffer" from new editions.

This is the first I've heard that MW wrote the Wood Elves, but I assure you it was never a broken book, even on release. It was a manuver army in a manuver game that had a tourney system that rewarded crushing victories to the near exclusion of all other results. A good WE player might win every game in a tourney in 6th, but still not place in the top 3 (or even 10) because they could never muster the murder levels demanded to do so.

WE's were never, ever about tabling the other guy - they're the guys who just hit-and-run all game long like forest ninjas and do decent damage while taking little to none in return. 'Ard Boyz and tournaments in general are not Warhammer, rather it's taking an inherently unbalanced game and trying to utterly break it.
WE's in 6th, when used by a good player were the worst possible army to fight. Nothing but dryads, waywatchers, treemen & wildriders suplimented by hero-level wizards who'd tree sing them everywhere. You'd never get a charge off, and you'd spend the entire game chasing your tail due to how the movement rules worked.

Sure, WE's got pretty pants come 7th, and 8th is absolutely no place for them in their current incarnation. But in 6th, they were one of the dirtiest armies around when you ran into their power lists!

Eldarain wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:I don't think he did write the WE book, he wasn't didn't join GW until 2006 or 2007 IIRC. The first stuff I think he was credited in was either late 2007 or early 2008.

He actually did. I just checked it. "Written by: Anthony Reynolds and Matthew Ward."

Really? I didn't think he'd been at GW that far back, he seems to have a rather large gap in published works between then though it looks like.